*DEVS* A new gold sink idea to REPLACE Fort Powder + help fix economy

Stratics Veteran

Okay, here is the idea. Remove fortification powder from the game, you can no longer get it from bods. All POF does is get an item, give it to a character, and let them gain profit from it. This is the opposite of a gold sink and helps inflate the economy.

Before you cry about your armor breaking (which it should not), here is the alternative.

You go to your local town Blacksmith/Tailor. You notice a new option. "Fortify your armor/weapon" It costs you 10k per point that you want to fortify, so if you want to fortify an armor piece with 80/80, and want it to go to 90/90, it will cost you 100k.

That idea could work well alone, with some price toggling, but I suggest that the price also INCREASES as people fortify, just like reagents/bandies when you buy from an NPC. So we are looking at 100k per CHARGE after so much use. so from 80/80 to 90/90 that is a mil. This will keep people from constantly fortifying, but also allowing the prices to drop back down to 10k/charge so that the not-so-rich among the community also get a shot at fortifying their armor. Maybe even limit this to guildmasters of blacksmith/tailor so the prices stay at a decent rate. This also gives people the option of saving money and just using GM armor more often, bringing UO a small bit back towards pre-insurance days, and also making Self Repair a very useful/sought after mod.

Stratics Veteran

There are many ways to remove gold from UO. Hurting another player's game experience doesn't have to be one of them.

The best way to remove gold from UO would be to:
1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.
2) Add feature to vendors to allow the owner to auto re-set all prices to .1% of what they previously were (rounding up).
3) Leave pricing the same for all basic items on NPC Vendors, but reduce the price for all resources, lootables, and non-basic items (i.e. Shadow Iron Shields), which will also fluctuate based on supply/demand. Any items bought from NPC Vendors before the change could only be sold back for 1/1000th the original value (to stop folks from buying tons of NPC stuff before the change then sell it back after).
4) Either remove loot gold or reduce it to just a trickle (1-10 gps) on everything except Level 5 Fame Creatures (Balrons, Ancient Wyrms), Bosses (mini and full) and Champions.
5) Make sure the gold on all bosses (i.e. Swoops) is based on difficulty.
6) Remove or greatly reduce gold earned from turning in BODs.
7) Leave housing prices high.

Only thing on that list I have a hard time with is<blockquote>6) Remove or greatly reduce gold earned from BOD rewards</blockquote> Have you compared roughly similar gold rewards between Smith and Tailor? I'd say equalize these guys first, which would mean Smithing takes a hit.

Have you compared roughly similar gold rewards between Smith and Tailor? I'd say equalize these guys first, which would mean Smithing takes a hit.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a big user of the Smithing BOD system (though I don't script it, I do have 5 BOD runners and am sitting on nearly 600 filled deeds to turn in when the changes are put in). I have a close to Legendary Smith in the process (about 117 at the moment), so what I'm going to say will affect me quite a lot as well.

The biggest thing I see as a probable issue with Smithing BODs after the fix is this: You can turn in a BOD and get a new one immediately. This is a GOOD thing.

The problem is this: Previously BOD mules had to be worked up to 70 skill to pull deeds worth doing. Now, the best BOD mules will be those that are under 50 skill so that they can pull a low end junk deed that can be filled with store bought items then turned in by a single GM -&gt; Legendary Smith to pull a higher end deed with a better chance.

While the BOD system needs the shot in the arm of this, there is also the issue that this can and will create a HUGE flow of gold into the game as the large colored deeds will be easier to fill and are worth a SUBSTANTIAL amount of gold.

All POF does is get an item, give it to a character, and let them gain profit from it. This is the opposite of a gold sink and helps inflate the economy.

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False!
POF's do not generate any money. They transfer money from one player to another, which isn't a gold sink in the first place, nor does it attribute to inflation.

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but you are getting the gold from filling bods, and making a LARGE profit from it. So +gold from nothing. Maybe the leather you got from dragons to fill bods, or even if you bought it it is still a profit. Bods are free.

The best way to remove gold from UO would be to:
1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.

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Technically this would remove gold from the game but in no way would it fix the problems in the economy. It wouldn't change any items' relative value at all. The only difference is that we would be seeing less zero's.

I dont do bods but powders are one of the few things that a casual blacksmith can actually make any money from.

The thing with gold sinks that people may not often appreciate is this: gold sinks for new players - and other players that aren't already extremely rich - is kind of a bad thing. A wealthy player doesn't care about buying pof...all it would do is slow the rate at which he's earning gold, but he'd still be earning. It's about taking that gold out of the game really, which can't really be done. Eliminating lrc and requiring reg bags would be a good idea for certain, but there would be such an uproar and an exodus of players if that happened that, well, it won't happen. Imagine building an all 70s 100 LRC 10 MR meddable suit, then the lrc doesn't matter anymore...you would be displeased to say the least. Honestly, this game is fun, but completely beyond saving, imho. Scale the amount of insurance based on how good an item is. Or offer uber items available from NPCs that sell them for huge amounts of gold, 250m+ that only the wealthiest players can get. Nothing beyond the realms of rational, but just outstanding gear, make it something that would have a hard time affecting pvp, so chars can still be balanced with respect to that, and people don't start crying. So one player gets an amazing item and a quarter bil is gone? Why not?

Stratics Veteran

Only thing on that list I have a hard time with is<blockquote>6) Remove or greatly reduce gold earned from BOD rewards</blockquote> Have you compared roughly similar gold rewards between Smith and Tailor? I'd say equalize these guys first, which would mean Smithing takes a hit.

[/ QUOTE ]Good Point Smith BODS give alot more than Tailor BODs. Maybe if they just changed the Smith BODs to be inline with the Tailor BODs, we'd be OK.

Stratics Veteran

The best way to remove gold from UO would be to:
1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.

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Technically this would remove gold from the game but in no way would it fix the problems in the economy. It wouldn't change any items' relative value at all. The only difference is that we would be seeing less zero's.

I dont do bods but powders are one of the few things that a casual blacksmith can actually make any money from.

[/ QUOTE ]You can't do step one unless you also do steps 2-7. That would be like trying to make a cake, but stopping after greasing the pan.

Also, by removing 99.9% of the gold, but leaving the the NPC items at the same price, you have changed the relative value. That NPC shield that costs 62gp will cost you the equivalent of 62,000 gold after the change.

1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.

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Heh, well this clearly isn't thought out very well.

The number of 0's we're dealing with isn't the problem (or, well, it wouldn't be if we could get some damned commas), it's the relative value of items in game. Scaling down the visible number wouldn't effect the economy one single bit because it doesn't change the amount of money we have in comparison to things that are for sale.

On top of fixing nothing, it would create a mass of economical problems. Look at it this way, if you shrink all gold to 99.9% its original denomination, what does that do to empty bottles that cost 5gp? 1 of 3 things has to happen:

1) The game would have to implement pence, or (much) smaller denominations of 1 gold coin, which effectively make 1 gold coin 1000 (or whatever) units, putting you right exactly back where you started.

2) All originally lower-priced items would have to be purchased in amounts that are evenly divisible by 1000. If i want 1 bottle, I have to buy 1000, 2000, etc. Frankly, give me a flooding of zeros problem WAAY before you stick me with trillions of extra items on every subserver.

3) Leave the prices of the lower-priced items the same. Of course this is unrealistic: If I had 2m before the downsize, now I have 2000; and I still have to pay 5gp for a bottle? Suddenly that bottle costs me a pre-downscale equivalent of 5k. Well, that means a Ossian Grimoire (or whatever) would have to cost 1000 times more than it's newly scaled price in order to keep the relative value stable (against blank scrolls, regs, bottles, fletchers tools etc); so it still costs the same 2 mil it did before the scale, except I now only have 2k in the bank.

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Not to Hijack the thread:

AlThorin is absolutely correct. PoFs don't inflate the economy. Many of the methods people use to attain the money to buy PoFs (and other items) do. Lofty gold rewards on high level BODs and Swoops are a prime example.

The idea is good, though, because PoFs as they are are kind of flawed. In Flames had a viable comment that the suggested price of charges is a little steep, if nothing but a semantic.

I don't understand why some people feel that powder of fortification is a good candidate for being changed or removed.

Under the existing system, people work to get the specific items that work best for their character's suits and weapon abilities. These items lose durability points as they are used and repaired repeatedly, and an in-game economy function (BODS for fort powder) provides the means to restore those lost durability points.

I don't see what's broken and is therefore deserving of a fix? Nobody I personally know in-game complains about fort powder. The most common complaint I hear on vent is people chasing us down (Felucca) with such a speed difference in their client that they can flamestrike other people while seeming to be "on the run".

The best way to remove gold from UO would be to:
1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.

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Technically this would remove gold from the game but in no way would it fix the problems in the economy. It wouldn't change any items' relative value at all. The only difference is that we would be seeing less zero's.

I dont do bods but powders are one of the few things that a casual blacksmith can actually make any money from.

[/ QUOTE ]You can't do step one unless you also do steps 2-7. That would be like trying to make a cake, but stopping after greasing the pan.

Also, by removing 99.9% of the gold, but leaving the the NPC items at the same price, you have changed the relative value. That NPC shield that costs 62gp will cost you the equivalent of 62,000 gold after the change.

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As Dave said all yoru solutions still do not address the issue very well. All you suggest is removing zeros fromt he ends of player pricetages. Everything will remain relative. Since most items are craftable, there is little need to go buy NPC items and thus players will not ever face the cost of NPC items being higher. And, why remove gold like you suggest when they could just increase the cost of all npc items by 1000x. The result will be exactly the same. That 62gp shield WILL cost 62,000gp this way, and it would not mess up situations of rounding. If I only have 500 gold, what happens to it? I have .5 gold now?

Take a look at Siege, our npc items are 3x the price of trammie shards- does anyone notice it? no. No one buys from NPCs. There is little to no reason to do so. Red characters can't buy from NPCs at all, at that.

Edit: If you want good things you must either work for them or if you ONLY want to PVP then you must buy them from other players.

Having a situation where your armor is unbreakable and never must be maintained is bad - you could just aswell play battlefield or whatever those games are called....

Pof as it is now is extremly bad - Either the items should oversaturate after a time or it should only be possible to pof at a NPC (Goldsink!) and then again NOT infinitley !

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POF should stay.

Insurance must go and be replaced with an account gold penalty when resurrection occurs - 1% of total accounts (All chars combined) gold in bank if player res'd and 2% if wandering healer res'ed (bout time the monks made some cash )

Stratics Veteran

As Dave said all yoru solutions still do not address the issue very well. All you suggest is removing zeros fromt he ends of player pricetages. Everything will remain relative. Since most items are craftable, there is little need to go buy NPC items and thus players will not ever face the cost of NPC items being higher. And, why remove gold like you suggest when they could just increase the cost of all npc items by 1000x. The result will be exactly the same. That 62gp shield WILL cost 62,000gp this way, and it would not mess up situations of rounding. If I only have 500 gold, what happens to it? I have .5 gold now?

Take a look at Siege, our npc items are 3x the price of trammie shards- does anyone notice it? no. No one buys from NPCs. There is little to no reason to do so. Red characters can't buy from NPCs at all, at that.

There is no magic bullet to fix the economy.

[/ QUOTE ]You need to read the entire list...

1) Reduce all gold by 99.9% (1,000gps = 1gp) rounding off to nearest full gp.
2) Add feature to vendors to allow the owner to auto re-set all prices to .1% of what they previously were (rounding up).
3) Leave pricing the same for all basic items on NPC Vendors, but reduce the price for all resources, lootables, and non-basic items (i.e. Shadow Iron Shields), which will also fluctuate based on supply/demand. Any items bought from NPC Vendors before the change could only be sold back for 1/1000th the original value (to stop folks from buying tons of NPC stuff before the change then sell it back after).
4) Either remove loot gold or reduce it to just a trickle (1-10 gps) on everything except Level 5 Fame Creatures (Balrons, Ancient Wyrms), Bosses (mini and full) and Champions.
5) Make sure the gold on all bosses (i.e. Swoops) is based on difficulty.
6) Remove or greatly reduce gold earned from turning in BODs.
7) Leave housing prices high.

Items 4, 5, and 6 make gold much harder to accumulate, thus gold value stays high. If there are other ways to easily accumulate gold, they should also be made harder (such as buying cloth, cutting it into bandages, then selling the bandages to a healer at a profit).

Something else they should implement is global NPC vendor pricing. Right now on Napa, you can buy ingots for 20gp each in Minoc, then sell the same ingots for 55gp in Luna. So 500 ingots can net you 17,500 gp in less than a minute. That doesn't make sense especially since we can recall or sacred journey almost anywhere we want to go. The price for any item should be the same regardless of where you buy or sell it.

Item 7 makes housing valuable again. Sure. Someone could sell their house for the gold, but then they wouldn't have a house and wouldn't be able to afford to buy another until they save up the gold again. This could be exploited by creating trial accounts, but that could be thwarted by not allowing trial (non-paying) accounts to have houses.

This isn't just about removing 0's. It's about making a gold piece worth something again. Right now, 1,000 gold isn't even worth looting.

Btw, your 500 gp would be worth 1gp (rounding up). Below 500 gp would be worth 0 gp. If anything below 500 was rounded up, then some smart folks would unstack all the gold and get a 1 for 1 ratio.

Stratics Veteran

That is too complicated and thousand ways it can go very terribly wrong. Considering the intricacies of mmorpg worlds, terribly wrong is guaranteed.

Not to mention you cannot label OP's idea as unfair and game style changing and then propose this at the same time.

[/ QUOTE ]It doesn't seem that complicated to me (I am a developer) and until I hear a better way to give value back to gold, I'll stick to it.

OP's original idea focused squarely on 1 way to remove gold from the game. His way effected 1 specific group of players and wouldn't have removed as much gold as he thought, since the BOD reward for a PoF is not that much and the gold from selling a PoF is player to Player; not server to player. My idea would remove 99.9% of the gold from the game spread out equally to all players, lower the ability of players to exploit the gold giving system, and wouldn't require any gold sinks; thus a gold piece would have value again.

Stratics Veteran

I don't understand why some people feel that powder of fortification is a good candidate for being changed or removed.

Under the existing system, people work to get the specific items that work best for their character's suits and weapon abilities. These items lose durability points as they are used and repaired repeatedly, and an in-game economy function (BODS for fort powder) provides the means to restore those lost durability points.

I don't see what's broken and is therefore deserving of a fix? Nobody I personally know in-game complains about fort powder. The most common complaint I hear on vent is people chasing us down (Felucca) with such a speed difference in their client that they can flamestrike other people while seeming to be "on the run".

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It is the fact that you never lose anything. In a game 10 years old ,when an item only needs cheap repairs to sustain it, gold becomes inflated. Not only that, but a gold sink of ANY kind is needed. Some people throw out 'oh make a purple robe with 10%lrc' all that does is make one rich person have an item, while making people PAY for fortification will effect everyone and sink a lot more gold.

Stratics Veteran

That is too complicated and thousand ways it can go very terribly wrong. Considering the intricacies of mmorpg worlds, terribly wrong is guaranteed.

Not to mention you cannot label OP's idea as unfair and game style changing and then propose this at the same time.

[/ QUOTE ]It doesn't seem that complicated to me (I am a developer) and until I hear a better way to give value back to gold, I'll stick to it.

OP's original idea focused squarely on 1 way to remove gold from the game. His way effected 1 specific group of players and wouldn't have removed as much gold as he thought, since the BOD reward for a PoF is not that much and the gold from selling a PoF is player to Player; not server to player. My idea would remove 99.9% of the gold from the game spread out equally to all players, lower the ability of players to exploit the gold giving system, and wouldn't require any gold sinks; thus a gold piece would have value again.

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My OP has very very little to do with taking the gold OUT of the PoF sellers hand, that is a small side effect. The BIG picture is charging EVERYONE gold to fortify their armor. Poor? You probably have poor armor. It is not worth fortifying anyway, so just go to doom get some new pieces and you are off running again. OR wait until the price drops to fortify. If you are rich, you pay the price to fortify your armor, taking the gold OUT of the rich player's hands and INTO the gold sink.

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